Jenny Baker - Run For Your Life: How One Woman Ran Circles Around Breast Cancer

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

Jenny Baker, 2017

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 978-1-78531-261-8

eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-262-5

--

Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com

For my chemo runners

Lucy, Harry, Chris, Mandy,
Liz, Joel and Neil
and for Jonny, always

I FIND the last long run before a marathon comes with a huge sense of relief. It is the sign that the bulk of your training is over; you can do no more to influence your performance on the day except sleep, eat well and try not to trip up kerbs. I know lots of runners struggle with the taper at the end of a training plan, the couple of weeks when you reduce the mileage so you can start the race on rested legs, but actually I like that shift in gear, from investing in training to needing to trust it.

Inevitably you wonder if you have done enough and whether you will be able to deliver on race day, but over the next couple of weeks there is a growing sense of anticipation at being about to find out what you are capable of.

This particular last long run had added significance for me because this was the first time I was going to do two marathons in close succession the Palestine Marathon in Bethlehem at the end of March followed by London a month later. I learned from my 40th that significant birthdays pass better when they are significantly celebrated, so as well as parties with friends and family I had decided to mark turning 50 in 2015 by doing what I loved most: running.

Secretly I wanted to do five marathons that year Palestine, London, Bath in the autumn with my sister, my first 50km ultra along the Suffolk coast and another one somewhere in between just because I could although I had not yet admitted to all of those out loud. The previous year had been my best year of running; I had got a PB in every distance I had run and had done my highest annual mileage ever. I felt happier in my skin approaching my 50th birthday than at any other time in my life, and running was a huge contributing factor, giving me a sense of physical, spiritual and mental well-being. Life was good.

My plan on that cold day in March was to do a 20-mile loop, running along roads through Kew to Richmond, following the trail inside the perimeter of Richmond Park and then home along the river with a lap of Ealing Common at the end to make up the distance. Urban runners need to be more intentional about finding green spaces and trails to run in, and this route had a good mix of scenery and surfaces. It also had a reasonable number of inclines, which are few and far between in Ealing where I live. Palestine is a hilly marathon, run over a two-lap course because there are not 26.2 consecutive miles on the roads leading out of Bethlehem without checkpoints on the way. It is a tough course because although more people take part each year, not many do the full marathon and you end up running most of it on your own which is why I was doing this training run solo.

Having made it up the long slow rise of Richmond Hill and past the old Royal Star and Garter Home for injured servicemen that was now being turned into luxury flats, it was a relief to turn in to the park and follow the trail round the edge. Richmond Park is the closest we west-Londoners can get to proper countryside, created 400 years earlier as a hunting park for royalty. It has areas of wide-open scrublands filled with ancient trees where deer still roam as well as ponds, rugby pitches and woodland gardens. It is a busy place, a magnet for cyclists and runners and a scenic cut- through for cars on their way to south London. But it is one of my favourite places to run, a place to breathe deeply and savour the trails, a place to forget the urban sprawl that lies on the other side of the wall and try to spot the deer under the trees. I settled into a steady pace after the exertion of the hill, running on autopilot.

And then, all at once:

a tug as my foot catches on something;
confusion as the ground rushes to meet me;
a futile attempt to break my fall with my hands;
an involuntary grunt as the breath is knocked from me;
a thud as my knee hits the ground and a smack as my cheekbone lands on tarmac.
Split-second silence.
Stillness.

Shakily, I get up and hobble back to the path. It takes me a little while to work out what has happened and what to do next. I had tripped on something and landed on the road across the entrance to the car park. My leggings had ripped and my knee was bleeding. I could feel that my lip was already starting to swell. I made my way over to the caf and asked to use their toilets.

Disinterested, the guy behind the counter waved me over to the portakabins at the far side of the car park. There were other people around, runners, cyclists and dog walkers but no one stopped to ask me how I was or find out whether they could help. I assessed the damage in the mirror, dabbing at my face with some damp loo paper and cursing my lack of attention that had led to my fall. What should I do? I could ring Jonny, my husband, to get him to come and pick me up, or keep going and do the route that I had planned.

I decided on a middle option, to run back home from there; it wouldnt be quite the 20 miles in my schedule but it would be closer than the nine that I had just done. My knee felt stiff as I set off but after a while it loosened up a bit and I plodded for home.

Five miles later I had to admit defeat. My knee was really painful. I had almost reached Kew Bridge, which is a couple of miles from my home. I got my phone out and pressed Jonnys name to call him, only for the wheel of death to appear on the screen and for the battery to die. I allowed myself some tears of self-pity as I realised my only option was to walk.

It takes a moment to trip; it takes longer to realise the full implications. Two hours later, I was eating breakfast in the kitchen after a shower, feeling more positive now I was warm again and determined that this was not going to derail my plans. Three days later I was tired of having to explain where my marvellous black eye had come from and was trying to be patient about getting back to running. A week later, I tried a tentative couple of miles round the common only to realise that this was more serious than I thought.

After several trips to the physio, I had to admit I wasnt going to run a marathon in Palestine and I withdrew from London as well, devastated that everything was going wrong. Of course I knew that there would be other races, that I would recover from my injuries, that it wasnt the end of the world, but what I felt was a visceral sense of loss, a death of a dream and a fear that this could be the end of my running.